... Now it's laidback Robert! A bizarre early life in hippy communes, sleeping among free spirits on beaches, Tias fashioned a broad outlook for Robert Carlyle, star of the series Hamish Macbeth BY LISA VANOLI Probably best known for his portrayal of Albie, the psychopathic Liverpool fan in the latest series of Cracker, Robert Carlyle has had a dramatic change of character for his new series ...

... A story to haunt you BY MOIRA PETTY From the heart of her own horror, a 12-year-old victim of the Sierra Leone war spoke with stoicism, humour and imagination. Child of the Border -- Africa, Sia Mia's Story, was the first in a series, CMM of Our Time (R4, from Monday, June 5) about children from different cultures. The project is the brainchild of leading dramatist Lee Hall and head of BBC ...

... Views from the battle lines BY MOIRA PETTY The reverberations of the dirty business that is war, of hopefulness outdone by hopelessness, echoed through two dramas that on the surface had little to link them. Silver's City (R4, Monday, April 24) on Loyalist Belfast was a hard thriller with a soft centre that turned out to be hard after all. Gary Mitchell's Stranded (R3, Saturday, April 29) was ...

... Left longing for more Sillitoe BY MOIRA PETTY The sense of a community in a time and place was wrapped as thick as porridge around Allan Sillitoe's mesmerising radio reinterpretation of his own classic Saturday Night, Sunday Morning (Mentorn Radio for R4, Monday, November 27). Working class Nottingham 35 years ago seemed light years away root ed in some dark Dickensian past where there was ...

... In the name of the Father LOOK WHO'S TALKING BY LISA VANOLI Ardal O'Hanlon's career as a stand-up comedian has taken a back seat while he concentrates on his role in Father Ted. But why is the shy Irishman in an industry full of exposure anyway? Memories of landing the role of Father Dougal McGuire are all a blur to stand-up comedian Ardal O'Hanlon. He swears the thought of acting had never ...

... Spending time on words that count By MOIRA PETTY occasionally, a raaio piay nas ine power to stop you still in your tracks, engage intellect and emotion and stay with the listener long after transmission. Such a play was Adverse Possession (R3, Sunday, December 13) in which the forces of greed and materialism were vanquisnea oy ancient Irish folkloric beliefs. It is the second radio play by ...

... Drama that gets under the skin By Moira Petty Crime-based drama which gets under the skin and into the brain of its perpetrators works so well on radio. While television drama increasingly portrays the physical elements of crime and dwells lingeringly on bloodied bodies on the mortuary slab. it is left to radio drama to chart real emotions. This was done to startling effect in Shelagh ...

... There's a dry eye in the house By Moira Petty The ultimate weepie came to radio but left me dry-eyed. This was less an indictment of my stony-heartedness than the deliberately non-sentimental direction by Ned Chaillet of Love Story (R4, Saturday, August 30). Erich Segal's novel became a film which launched a trillion Kleenexes, but this radio adapta tion by Juliet Ace honed in on the couple's ...

... Family history provides a strong voice BY MOIRA PETTY Radio's strongest voices come from personal experience or conviction, and this is true of all six plays reviewed here. Some were more successful tnan others but each came with a powerful racial identity that impelled them forwards. beoasnan Barry s oensery- layered and lyrical account of the effect of the Irish uprising of 1922 on a Dublin ...

... Trap of deadly dignity BY MOIRA PETTY Commemorating the dead can be a portentous business, as Michael found out in Soft Stones (BBC Manchester for R4, Tuesday, September 12). He wanted some kind of a memorial to mark the life of his boyhood friend, dead at 35, and was planning to write a poem. While he considered this, he joined a guided tour of Leeds and noticed how the solemn dignity of ...

... Dementia eloquently portrayed BY MOIRA PETTY A genetic scientist reduced to singing: Which came first, the chicken or the egg?, was one of the quirky features of Stephanie McCarthy's play about catharsis. Bird in the CameHia Tree (BBC World Service, Saturday, February 21). The play runner-up in the World Service's International Playwriting Competition used the dementia of former boffin ...

... Comedy of Celtic cadences By MOIRA PETTY One of the great poets of rural Ireland, where Catholicism comes ready-mixed with Celtic superstition, was a sophisticated Anglo-Irish Protestant. JM Synge was encouraged by Yeats to reproduce that amalgam of musicality of speech and introspection of thought that characterised the Irish peasantry. This he did to best effect in The Playboy of the ...